In order to guarantee medium and long term national energy security, the Federal Government created the National Energy Plan (Plano Nacional de Energia – PNE), concluded in 2006. The National Energy Plan sets out the directives for growth of the Brazilian energy sector until 2030, on the basis of economic and demographic growth along with technological evolution forecasts. In accordance with the 'most probable scenario' that the plan envisages, electricity demand in Brazil should grow 4.1% per annum on average over the next two decades, given a yearly GDP increase of approximately 5%, a stabilization of the Brazilian population at 238 millions of inhabitants at the end of the period with gains in energy efficiency of the order of 30% on account of the technological advances and governmental programmes such as the National Electricity Conservation Programme - PROCEL and the National Energy Efficiency Labelling Programme.
On the basis of these premises, to cater for the increasing demand of electricity in Brazil, the installed power generation capacity in Brazil should be increased from the current 100 thousand MW to 220 thousand MW by 2030. In accordance with the Decennial Electricity Generation Expansion Plan that was prepared jointly with the Ministry of Mines and Energy, updated on a yearly basis, 88 thousand MW would originate from new hydroelectric power plants and the rest from other sources. In this way, the Decennial Electricity Generation Expansion Plan aims at maintaining the Brazilian energy matrix as one of the cleanest in the world with more that three quarters of electricity generated from renewable sources, specifically hydropower in Brazil.
Within this context, the construction of the Belo Monte power plant is invested with capital importance. With an estimated installed capacity of approximately 11.5 thousand MW, the first instance of the use of the Xingu River alone will constitute 12.5% of the hydroelectric park to be installed in Brazil over the next two decades. In addition, the river water regime of the Xingu River is complementary to the regimes of the rivers both in the South and Northeast that currently bear the main responsibility of generating hydroelectricity in Brazil: whilst the latter have their floods between January and March, the former presents a greater water flow between April and May. Alternate rainfall regimes are important to increase energy security of the country and to enable water economy in the reservoirs in drought periods by increasing power plant production during the rainy seasons.
The project of setting up hydroelectric power plants on the Xingu River date back to the 1970s, under the name of Cararaô. At the time, the plan was to construct three plants using models current at the time, which would have created three large flooded areas in the shape of a ‘cascade’ occupying a total area of approximately 1500 km2. Given the new environmental requirements of the Brazilian Government and society and subsequent technological advances, the project was completely reformulated with a view to minimizing possible socio-environmental impacts upon the region.
As it is known, the construction of large dams for hydroelectric use has been targeted by the criticism of environmentalists and social movements since the 1980s. Amongst possible risks, the emission of gases by the submerged vegetation that cause the greenhouse effect; change in regional micro-climate because of the flooded areas; damage to river flora and fauna caused by the interruption of the river watercourse; and transfer of large numbers of workforce to the building site combined with possible disorganized urban growth. Such arguments are generally based on worst case scenarios illustrated with examples of project developments that had lesser regard to sustainability matters.
The proposal that is currently being debated seeks to minimize possible negative effects of construction of dams. It presupposes merely hydroelectric utilization of the river (the Belo Monte hydropower plant), that will require a construction of one main dam and one secondary one, close to each other, as such creating a single flooded area of approximately 500 km2 (a third of what earlier projects anticipated). Belo Monte will have an installed capacity of 20 MW per square kilometre flooded, a much higher index than that of Brazilian mega-power plants: Itaipu (10MW/km2) and Tucuruí (3.5MW/km2). Belo Monte will also be, with regard to this feature, as efficient as the most of the modern hydroelectric plants currently being built such as the Three Gorges in China, with 21MW/km2, and especially more efficient than the current practice abroad such as the Portuguese hydroelectric plant of Alqueva, the largest in Europe with 0.95 MW/km2.
In addition to the conceptual change, the development project envisages 40 mitigation initiatives for possible socio-environmental impacts on the region. The cost of these measures is estimated to reach 2.5 billions of Reais of the total 16 billions of estimated costs of the project by the Government. The mitigation initiatives, required by the environmental license recently granted by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), include conventional initiatives such as the management of the threatened fauna and the creation and maintenance of ecological reserves in the region. They also comprise an innovative initiative: improvement in the infrastructure of the surrounding municipalities should there be an eventual influx of migrants attracted by the venture. In order to achieve this, solid investments in sanitation, housing, health and education are being planned for the region of the project.
With the aim of preventing mass population movements to the region of the Amazon Forest, which could possibly induce environmental degradation and conflicts with local communities, the Belo Monte development project anticipates another innovation: the construction work will be carried out in shifts. The workers will be transported to the site and there they will work their shifts of days, and will then be returned to their homes once the next shift takes over. This will prevent permanent settlement of thousands of workers in the region of the development.
The set of initiatives required by IBAMA will be, according to the Minister for the Environment, Carlos Minc, ‘the largest mitigation initiative in Brazilian history’. The innovative development and anticipated measures will make it possible that no Indigenous village will be either removed or directly affected by the development, in comparison to other recent international projects.
Belo Monte constitutes, thus, a development project of undeniable strategic and economic importance for Brazil and represents a model of large scale hydroelectric plants as an environmentally sustainable alternative, provided that they are built with modern techniques, and a means of guaranteeing national energy security and preserving the Brazilian electricity matrix as one of the cleanest in the world.
February 2010